"Rat" found in drivers' license bill

Published 10:53 pm, Wednesday, June 5, 2013

HARTFORD -- Minority Republicans threatened to stall action Wednesday in the House of Representatives after finding a massive revision that would allow undocumented immigrants to apply for driver's licenses next month.

In a small, three-line reference in a massive, 508-page draft of legislation implementing the new $44 billion budget, the planned 2015 effective date was changed to July 1 of this year.

Upon discovering the change, which only referred to the legislation by its bill number, House Minority Leader Lawrence F. Cafero, D-Norwalk, said it was a sneaky attempt to accelerate the controversial program allowing about 54,000 undocumented immigrants the chance to take driving tests.

In retaliation, House Republicans slowed down business on the last day of the legislative session while Democrats tried to assure Cafero it was a mistake.

By 5 p.m., only a handful of bills had passed in the House.

Mark Ojakian, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's chief of staff, tried to mend fences with Republicans, who could easily shut down the flow of business on the last day of the session through extended questions on the floor and the submission of amendments.

Ojakian blamed the Legislative Commissioner's Office, which has a nonpartisan staff that drafts and reviews bills.

But Republicans said the very presence of the license legislation in the bill was suspicious, since the stand-alone bill that would start the program in 2015 has cleared both the House and the Senate and now sits on the governor's desk.

She recalled that the controversial license proposal resulted in an all-night debate and a final vote at dawn on May 23.

"It was one of the most important bills we've done in many years," Klarides said. "Here we are now on the last night of the session, not only with that date changed from 2015 to 2013, without anybody conveniently knowing about it until someone else found it, but we don't know where it came from," she said. "Now there's a trust issue. Now we have to continue on the rest of the day trying to figure out where we're going from here."